First-principles calculations on electronic properties of LaNiO3 in solid oxide fuel cell cathodes

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First-principles Calculations on Electronic Properties

of LaNiO

3

in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Cathodes

Pham Ba Duy

, Nguyen Duy Huy, Bach Thanh Cong

Computational Materials Science Laboratory,

Faculty of Physics, VNU University of Science, 334 Nguyen Trai, Hanoi, Vietnam 
Received 08 August 2017

Revised 28 August 2017; Accepted 15 September 2017

Abstract: First-principles calculations based on the density functional theory are used to study the 
electronic structure of LaNiO3 perovskite for application of cathode material in solid oxide fuel

cell. Our results show that bulk LaNiO3 exhibits metallic behavior. For 1x1x1 LaNiO3 unit cell,

increasing in-plane strain leads to the increase in the density of states (DOS) at the Fermi level. On
the other hand, the DOS at the Fermi level for 2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell first increases with the

strain up to 3% and then decreases for larger values of the strain. The difference between the
electronic structure of the 2x2x2 supercell and that of the 1x1x1 unit cell is attributed to the
rotations of NiO6 octahedra.

Keywords: Solid oxide fuel cell, density functional theory, LaNiO3 perovskite, electronic

structures, strain.

1. Introduction

The perovskite LaNiO3 is frequently used as cathode material for solid oxide fuel cells due to its

high temperature stability, acceptable thermal expansion, and the ability to enhance oxygen reduction
reaction [1-4]. At cathode-electrolyte interface, the induced strain caused by lattice mismatch between
LaNiO3 and electrolyte materials is expected to give rise to the reconstructions of the electronic

structures of LaNiO3. Such electronic reconstructions could be important as they are tightly linked

with the formation of oxygen vacancy and the conduction of oxygen ions, which greatly affect the
operation of the fuel cell. On the other hand, previous publications have reported that the NiO6

octahedra rotated in bulk LaNiO3, alternating the electronic structure [5, 6]. As a result of the induced

strain at the cathode-electrolyte interface, such octahedral rotations can be enhanced or suppressed.In
this paper, we investigate the electronic structure and NiO6 octahedral rotations of LaNiO3 under

epitaxial strain using first-principles calculations.

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

Corresponding author. Tel.: 84-915054648.
Email:

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2. Computational details

All calculations are performed based on the density functional theory [7] using plane-wave basis
sets [8]as implemented in the Quantum Espresso package [9]. The exchange-correlation interaction is

treated using local density approximation (LDA) with the Perdew-Zunger parametrization [10], and
the electron-ion interaction is described by Vandebilt ultrasoft pseudopotentials [11].

The computational models of 1x1x1 unit cell and 2x2x2 supercell of LaNiO3 are shown in Fig. 1.

Periodic boundary conditions are imposed in all dimensions. The kinetic energy cutoff for
wavefunctions is chosen at 680 eV and sufficient k-point sampling is employed in the Brillouin zone.
Structural optimizations are performed until all remaining forces acting on each atom are less than
0.03 eV/Å.

Fig. 1. Computational models of (a) 1x1x1 LaNiO3 unit cell and (b) 2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell without in-plane

strain, indicating rotations of NiO6 octalhedra. The small red, big green, and medium blue balls indicate O, La,

and Ni atoms, respectively. The rectangular boxes represent supercells.

Previous experimental publication has reportedthat the epitaxial strain at the interface of LaNiO3

layers and the substrate penetrates deep into the LaNiO3 inner layers [12]. Thus, it is assumed that the

imposed strain throughout our models is uniform. To simulate the strained LaNiO3 layers, we fix the

in-plane lattice parameters and allow the out-of-plane lattice parameter of the 1x1x1 unit cell to relax.
We choose various in-plane strains from -3% to 5% as observed in experiments [13, 14]. Then, the
2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell is constructed (by doubling the obtained lattice parameters of the 1x1x1 unit

cell), allowing for local rotations of NiO6 octahedra.

3. Results and discussion

The optimized lattice parameters of the 1x1x1 LaNiO3 unit cell are found to be lcal=lx=ly=lz=

3.749 Å, which are 2.3% smaller than the published experimental data [3]. The underestimation of the
lattice parameters is typical of LDA calculations [15, 16].

Figure 2 shows the out-of-plane strain uz = lz/lcal – 1 as a function of the in-plane strain uxy = lx/lcal –

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respectively, and lcal is the non-strained equilibrium one. It can be seen that uz declines (almost

linearly) by 0.6% for each 1.0% increase in uxy. The computed out-of plane strain of LaNiO3 on

SrTiO3 substrate is found to be 1.0% as compared to the experimental value of 0.7% [5].

Fig. 2. Calculated out-of-plane strain uz vs in-plane
strain uxy. x: experimental value for a LaNiO3 film

grown on SrTiO3 substrate. Vertical arrows designate

in-plane strains of commercially available substrates,
from left to right: LaAlO3, SrTiO3, and KTaO3.

Fig. 3. Total DOS of 1x1x1 LaNiO3 unit cell for

various values of in-plane strain uxy. The Fermi level
is chosen at 0 eV.

Figure 3 presents the total DOS of 1x1x1 LaNiO3 unit cell for various in-plane strains. As one can

see, LaNiO3 keeps the metallic behavior, and the total DOS near the Fermi level is enhanced with the

strain. Specifically, the DOS is increased by 2.7 times as uxy increases from -2% to 5%. Previous

publications have shown that states near the Fermi level of bulk LaNiO3 are formed by the

hybridization between Ni 3d and O 2p orbitals [2, 17-19]. Thus, we plot in Fig. 4 the projected DOS of 
strained LaNiO3 onto Ni t2g and eg orbitals. For the non-strained case, t2g-derived states are completely

filled, and the eg-derived states are occupied by one electron. For uxy > 0%, t2g-derived states become

partially occupied as a result of the changes in Ni-O bond distances. In the vicinity of the Fermi level,
the density of t2g-derived states increases with increasing uxy, whereas that of eg-derived states first

increases and then decreases as uxy is larger than 3%. As the changes in the density of t2g-derived states

are substantial compared to those of eg-derived states, the total DOS at the Fermi level increases with

the in-plane strain.

For the 2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell, the electronic structure is expected to deviate from that of the

1x1x1 unit cell. The rotations of NiO6 octahedra inside the supercell change the Ni-O-Ni bonding

angles (see Fig. 1(b)) and thus alter the hybridization between Ni 3d and O 2p orbitals. Figure 5 
indicates the dependence of Ni-O-Ni angles along the z direction (αz) and in the xy plane (αxy) on the

in-plane strain. It is noted that the in-plane strain in the case of 2x2x2 supercell is the same as that in
1x1x1 unit cell. By increasing uxy, αz (αxy) decreases (increases), implying the reduction (enhancement)

of the p-d hybridization. Thus, a competition in the contributions of p-d hybridized states along the z 
direction and in the xy plane to the electronic structure is expected. We plot in Fig. 6 total DOS of the

2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell with respect to the in-plane strain. In contrast to the 1x1x1 unit cell case,

where the DOS at the Fermi level increases with increasing uxy (see Fig. 3), the DOS at the Fermi level

of the 2x2x2 supercell first increases with uxy up to 3% and then decreases. This behavior can be

attributed to the rotations of NiO6 octahedra, which alters the electronic structure in the vicinity of the

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Fig. 4. Projected DOS of 1x1x1 LaNiO3 unit cell onto (a) t2g and (b) eg orbitals of Ni atom for various values of 
in-plane strain uxy. The Fermi level is chosen at 0 eV.

Fig. 5. Ni-O-Ni angles along z direction (red line) 
and in xy plane (black line) as functions of the

in-plane strain uxy.

Fig. 6. Total DOS of 2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell for

various values of in-plane strain uxy. The Fermi level is
chosen at 0 eV.

4. Conclusions

First-principles calculations are employed to investigate the electronic structure of bulk LaNiO3

under epitaxial strain. By applying strain, the Ni t2g-derived states of the 1x1x1 unit cell become

partially occupied. In the vicinity of the Fermi level, the density of the t2g-derived states increases with

uxy while that of the eg-derived states increases for uxy < 3% and then decreases for larger uxy. In

addition, the variation of density of the t2g-derived states is much larger than that of the eg-derived

states, resulting in the increase of the total DOS at the Fermi level with respect to the in-plane strain.
For the 2x2x2 LaNiO3 supercell, rotations of the NiO6 octahedra are observed, altering the p-d

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Acknowledgements

This research is funded by the Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) under project number
QG.17.10.

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First-principles calculations on electronic properties of LaNiO3 in solid oxide fuel cell cathodes